PGA Continues To Ignore Their Younger Fans

My dad is a big golf fan. He watches most weekends especially when it’s a big tournament like last weekend’s Deutsche Bank Championship. He probably didn’t know Rory McIlroy dominated the front nine and held off Paul Casey down the stretch to win his first PGA tournament of the year until watching it late on Monday afternoon. But me and countless others knew McIlroy had won the tournament by 2:00 pm CST. In one of the biggest tournaments of the year, PGA let down their social media heavy fanbase.

Tape delay is a tricky thing, everyone understands that. Television executives believe ratings will not be as high if they show the tournament whether it be on Golf Channel or NBC. But let me as the PGA and NBC this question, what major sport’s playoff gets put on tape delay?

The answer: None of them.

Look if it’s one of the lesser tournaments, there’s more of a justified reason to keep the tournament on a tape delay. But if it’s one of the biggest non-major tournaments that has to be broadcast live even if the tournament is being played in the dead of night. What’s hilarious about the PGA turning its nose on their Twitter fan base is they are broadcasting parts of the playoffs on Twitter. What kind of a fucked up twisted world are we living in? PGA needs figure out how to handle this sort of thing when tee times need to be moved up due to weather. This tournament features too many good moments not be live on television in the morning.

How can golf capture the younger generation if they are gating live coverage on television or through streaming? They cannot. It’s not like baseball where they aren’t doing hot for ratings but seeing record numbers at the gate. At the very worst, the PGA could have streamed the final round for free on NBC or PGA’s own website. They could have owned the entire Labor Day sports coverage instead of seeing disgruntled fans bitch about how they weren’t able to see the final round.

In the least surprising news of the world, PGA’s ratings were the lowest for this tournament since 2008. There’s a bigger problem with PGA’s ratings continue to be low through the whole season, but that’s another story for another time. PGA needs to figure how to rite this ship. Whether this teams adding more streaming aspects or they switch their time windows to appease more fans.